Very Green Day: $20 Million in Soros Funding for Earth Day

Media, government promote lefty observance also funded by Soros.

By

Mike Ciandella

April 22, 2013 - 7:00am

Earth
Day is the biggest lefty environmental celebration of the year, and the
news media and George Soros love it. In fact, the liberal billionaire
has given more than $20 million to groups partnered with Earth Day 2013.

Earth
Day is always a media favorite. “It’s a great day to ride your bicycle”
anchor Natalie Morales exclaimed on the April 1 edition of NBC’s Today.
Just this month ahead of Earth Day, The New York Times, The Los Angeles
Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have all written
stories that mention the upcoming holiday, including promoting an
environmentalist’s “love letter to the planet,” publishing lesson plans[1] for students about Earth Day, and touting the opening of the “world’s greenest” office building on Earth Day.

But
the media aren’t alone in promoting this lefty event. The U.S State
Department announced its part in a partnership with the Earth Day
Network and the D.C. diplomatic community, called the D.C. Greening
Embassies Forum. The forum will discuss ways to make the embassies in
Washington D.C. more eco-friendly.

There
are other government agency partners, including the Environmental
Protection Agency, NASA, the Department of Energy and the Department of
Agriculture. All are listed as partners on the Earth Day 2013 website[2].

This media-hyped and government-promoted left-wing holiday has also gotten substantial funding from Soros. Since 2000, Soros[3] has given at least $20,131,868 million through his Open Society Foundations to organizations supporting Earth Day 2013.

Alliance for Climate Protection ($10,000,000)

NAACP ($4,488,000)

Natural Resources Defense Council ($2,058,011)

Union of Concerned Scientists ($900,000)

World Resources Institute ($752,637)

Earth Justice ($555,000)

Earth Island Institute ($500,000)

Defenders of Wildlife ($350,000)

Oxfam America ($273,585)

Unitarian Universalist Association ($100,000)

William C. Velasquez Institute ($75,000)

Vital Voices Global Partnership ($50,000)

World Wildlife Fund ($20,735)

350.org ($8,900)

Soros
is one of the primary funders of left-wing and liberal media groups.
Since 2000, he has given more then $550 million to liberal organizations
in the United States, including $52 million to fund an extensive
network of liberal media outlets.

Media
often focus on environmental issues and frequently take the liberal
point of view on the subject. Climate change, for example, has been a
threat for more than 100 years, according to the news media. During that
time, they have waffled between alarmism over cooling and worry over warming[4].
Time magazine’s science editor Charles Alexander, at a Sept. 16, 1989,
global warming conference spoke for the rest of the media when he
confessed: “I would freely admit on this issue we have crossed the
boundary from news reporting to advocacy.”

The
very first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amid hysteria
about the dangers of a new ice age. The media had been spreading fear of a cooling period[5] since
the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s. The first Earth
Day was also the hundredth anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birthday.
While Earth Day activists deny a connection, Lenin himself would mandate
days of community service to improve the environment—every year on his birthday[6].

Three
months before the first Earth Day, on Jan. 11, 1970, The Washington
Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather
haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder
Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid
Bryson, who said of the cooling trend: “there’s no relief in sight.”

The
media have consistently hyped Earth Day, even at the cost of more
relevant news events. The January 2012 March for Life rally was attended
by at least tens of thousands of pro-lifers, but CNN only gave it two
brief mentions on-air. However, when reportedly only hundreds[7]
showed up to celebrate Earth Day on the National Mall the same year,
CNN touted it as a "big rally" and covered it in-depth on Sunday
afternoon, telling its viewers "we want you to know all about this."

In 2011, the broadcast networks treated Good Friday and Earth Day as equals[8], putting the day when Christians worldwide remember Christ’s death on the same platform as the 41-year-old eco-celebration.

This year, the Earth Day 2013 official website includes an interactive “Ecological Footprint Calculator[9],”
where users can input how much they drive, what they eat, and how much
power they use to determine how big their ecological footprint is. But
even an American eco-saint[10]
couldn’t do enough to save the planet from running out of resources
according to the quiz. Of course, environmentalists have been
scaremongering about the end of resources for years and turned out to
be wildly wrong[11].

According to the Earth Day site[12],
“[m]ore than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities
each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.”

Federal employees and military personnel can donate to the Media Research Center through the Combined Federal Campaign or CFC. To donate to the MRC, use CFC #12489. Visit the CFC website for more information about giving opportunities in your workplace.